Category: Microsoft Office

Delay Loading Outlook Add-ins

David E. CraigLeave a comment

A customer I work with encountered an issue where a specific add-in was causing Outlook to lose its network connection. Essentially, we were unable to get the “Click here to view more on Microsoft Exchange” (in cached mode) to light up. Here is what we saw:

connect error

Here is what we wanted to see:

connected

It was always grayed out and no mater what we did in Outlook with the connection state, it never same back.

After a lot of troubleshooting we found one particular in-house add-in was causing the problem. Oddly, everything worked great with the same add-in in previous versions of Outlook, but in Outlook 2016, we started seeing this problem. Therefore, we knew it had to be a change made in Outlook 2016. What we found is that Outlook 2016 had been greatly reconfigured in the startup code to optimize network connections as it now connects to the cloud (Office 365). So we started working with the product team on identifying the root cause and in the end we were unable to find a solution (in time). My customers deployment was delayed.

As such, I had to come up with a workaround. We found that if the add-in was not loaded when Outlook started, but was manually enabled after Outlook  launched, the problem would NOT occur. This got me thinking: What if I created an add-in that loaded add-ins AFTER Outlook was done loading all other add-ins?

The Outlook Delayed Loading of Add-ins for the Enterprise was born. By the way, that name is credited to my customer. The catchy acronym stuck: D-LAME Add-in. wlEmoticon-disappointedsmile.png

I have posted the project for it here on GitHub here:

https://github.com/davecra/DLAME

You will need to load it into Visual Studio and compile it and then sign it with a certificate on your own. The code is provided AS IS. The README.md on the page explains the installation, configuration and usage of the a add-in once you have it ready for deployment. Some key points:

  • You will want to make sure it is not disabled by setting the Resilience policy key for the add-in.
  • You will want to move the add-in(s) you wish to delay from HKLM to HKCU registry locations.
  • You can load DLAME as either HKCU or HKLM. The suggestion is HKLM.

So, what can you use this for? Well, it turns out this add-in has a lot of uses and as I have started discussing it with other support folks at Microsoft, several use cases came out:

  1. You have a lot of add-ins that you need to have loaded with Outlook. They keep getting disabled by Outlooks resiliency feature, so you add policy settings to prevent them from being disabled, but now Outlook takes forever to launch. You can now set only DLAME to be resiliency policy blocked and then delay load all your other add-ins.
  2. Because it is a .NET/VSTO add-in, added to the above scenario, you can have all your VSTO add-ins load after Outlook has completed loading all other add-ins.
  3. Because the loading occurs on a background thread, the user will see Outlook fully load and then will start to see the other add-ins load (Ribbons and buttons appearing) after they are able to see their inbox and start reading/selecting items.

Bottom line, this add-in is useful for helping an enterprise manage their add-in without impacting the loading of Outlook or user productivity.

However, there is ONE major caveat. You will need to thoroughly test your add-ins because some add-ins might not like being loaded AFTER the fact. Technically, I have not found any that behave this way, but there could be some that register to certain events (like Application_Load and NewExplorer) that will not get fired if loaded after Outlook is already fully loaded.

OneNote: Do Your Tabs Disappear?

David E. Craig11 Comments

Recently, a customer I work with asked me to investigate why the tabs in their shared OneNote notebooks were disappearing. It is especially prevalent when they moved to OneNote 2016. The cause as it turned out was something called Windows Deduplication. At its simplest, it is a way to reduduplicate files and similar streams of data on a disk. It is a form of compression at its simplest which is to say it is a mechanism to allow you to stick more stuff on a computer or server disk. What we found was the deduplication was corrupting the OneNote index (toc) on the server and each time someone went to make changes to the OneNote file on the server. Tabs would start disappearing for other users when multiple users were editing the files. When we enabled the exception for OneNote files in the data deduplication feature and then moved the OneNote files from one folder to another and then back (which is required to de-optimize the files), the problem went away. To resolve this problem you will likely need your administrator involved:

  1. You will need to set an exception for the OneNote file extensions in Windows Server 2012 Data Deduplication.
    • Here are some details on configuring that with PowerShell. See the “Modifying Data Deduplication volume-wide settings” section.
    • You will need to exclude these extensions: *.one, *.onebin, *.onetoc2
  2. Next, have everyone close OneNote on their systems.
  3. Finally, you will need to “deoptimize” (or, and I love this, de-dedup) the files. To do this, you will create a folder somewhere in the shared folder, move all the files in the OneNote folder to that location, then move them back.

NOTE: Nothing needs to be done on the clients, they will just work the next time the users launch OneNote. You might notice the tabs will still initially appear to be missing, but they will re-index and come back. This might take a few minutes depending on how many tabs there are.

Once completed, you should find that your tabs are no longer disappearing.

Outlook Export Calendar to Word Add-in

David E. CraigLeave a comment

I have been working with a number of customers over the years that come from the world of Lotus Notes. And one of the areas they often complain about with regards to Outlook is the calendar printing options. There are certain things you just cannot do in Outlook from the printing perspective that leaves them wont for more.

So, I have been working over the years on this add-in. This has actually gone through a few iterations – the current version 1.2.0.9 is the most recent and most fully-featured version.

The full source code is on GitHub, here. It is totally open source and free to use, modify, etc. Here is what it can do:

addin

  • Printing calendars not available in Outlook by default.
  • The ability to create your own custom calendar
  • The ability to combine calendars for multiple people at once:
    • Displaying only overlapping schedules on the same calendar
    • Displaying all meetings including overlapping meeting
  • The ability to export in daily, weekly, by-weekly, tri-weekly or monthly formats.

The exact details on customization, installation and usage are all covered in the user guide, here.

#Excel: “Large Address Aware” #Patch

David E. Craig2 Comments

Ever since Office 2010, Excel has become more and more burdened with memory issues. The most common problems I have seen are hangs, crashes, errors about resources, and problems with cut/copy/paste. This has occurred more and more often with each subsequent build of Excel. The symptoms have become more apparent as Excel Spreadsheets have become more and more complex. Users have become more savvy with formulas, pivot tables, slicers, etc. And Excel has started using more and more memory to enable these features. The problem is 32-bit architecture on a system. Although application are supposed to have 4GB of memory, Excel is actually limited to 2GB where the system uses the other 2GB for shared process memory.

Now, there is a fix which makes Excel 2013 and 2016 “Large Address Aware.” This is a feature of Windows that limits memory for the system to 1GB, freeing up 3GB for Excel. This should help tremendously. Most of the problems reported with Excel usage should decrease as a result of this. For more information on this fix, see:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3160741

Counting down…

David E. CraigLeave a comment

With one month and one week to go, it is time to start moving off Windows XP and Office 2003. Here is another great article from Microsoft about how/why:

Support for Windows XP and Office 2003 ends April 8, 2014 — what’s next?
http://blogs.technet.com/b/firehose/archive/2014/02/26/support-for-windows-xp-and-office-2003-ends-april-8-2014-what-s-next.aspx

A few interesting highlights from the article:

  • Windows XP and Office 2003, however, have been supported for more than a decade, or since “Baywatch” went off the air.
  • Computers currently running Windows XP and Office 2003 won’t stop working on April 9, but over time security and performance will be affected: Many newer apps won’t run on Windows XP; new hardware may not support Windows XP; and without critical security updates, PCs may become vulnerable to harmful viruses, spyware and other malicious software that can steal or damage personal information and business data.
  • Office 365 — the next generation of familiar Office productivity applications in the cloud. The subscription-based service offers familiar Office tools and maintains file integrity and design when documents are edited by multiple people, and it provides enterprise-class security and privacy.

If you are considering the move and have questions about your Microsoft Office Integrated Line of Business Applications, there are many ways Microsoft and Microsoft partners can assist you in assessing and remediating these solutions.

You can learn more about Office 365 for your business here: http://blogs.office.com/office365forbusiness/

XP/2003 Deadline Looms

David E. CraigLeave a comment

If you are still on Windows XP and Office 2003, if you have not already started your migration, you should start ASAP. The end of support for BOTH is this April. Here is a great link that explains all the reasons you should start today: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enterprise/endofsupport.aspx.

I have heard from a number of folks that are “stuck” in XP/2003 land. Namely, because they have a large number of Office based solutions, Excel VBA add-ins, XLL’s, UDF’s, macros and Access 2003 databases that must be migrated and no idea how to begin to remediate them. There is help out there and a number of partners and even service offerings from Microsoft that can help you.

If you have a solution in Office 2003 that you need help to remediate, please contact me. Send me a private tweet or send me an InMail on LinkedIn.

VSTO and COM/OLE…

David E. Craig1 Comment

If you have been doing much work in VSTO and especially around Excel and embeddings, you may have been bit by this bug. Does this error look familiar:

clip_image002

“The program used to create this object is Excel. That program is either not installed on your computer or it is not responding. To edit this object, install Excel or ensure that any dialog boxes in Excel are closed.”

This error can be caused by the following:

  • A .NET3.5 Add-in or a .NET 4.0 Add-in
  • You have attached to the WorkbookOpen and/or WorkbookActivate events.
  • You are trying to edit/open/double-click on an embedded Excel instance inside a Word or PowerPoint document.

There have been several reports of this problem on the Microsoft MSDN site:

There are also a number of KB articles that document the problem and attribute it to specific programs:

The problem is specifically documented here:

Simple Solution

The basic simple answer is to place a Marshal.ComReleaseObject(Wb) at the end (or better, in the Finally block) of your event handlers. This will properly allow Word and excel to handle the OLE communication by not having VSTO hang on to an instance handle of the workbook, therefore causing the error.

And this is not carte blanche to start placing ComReleaseObject() all over your code. I have found VERY VERY few limited cases where using ComReleaseObject() in an add-in necessary. And this is one of them. Hot smile

Orphan Issue

It is not a panacea, either. Confused smile While it resolves the issues of OLE initialization and allows you to edit your Excel embedding in Word (as one example), it does not prevent one other scenario that I like to call “Orphaned Excel.” In this scenario, you edit your embedded Excel instance in another Window (usually via a right-click / Ole Object / Open). If you leave Excel open, return to Word and close the document, Excel should close. But in the VSTO COM/OLE scenario it may not – it will remain open with the embedded workbook still editable. However, it is orphaned an no longer associated with its container. Any edits will be lost.

That is where a solution I created for Excel/Word OLE interaction comes in here:

This add-in is very well commented and explains the following:

  • When a workbook is opened, it looks to see if it is embedded.
  • If it is, it connects to the running instance of Word, and gets a reference to the parent document.
  • A timer in the add-in will then continually check the status of the document
  • If the parent document is still opened, nothing happens. However, if Word is existed or the parent document is closed, the child embedding is forced closed.

IMPORTANT NOTE

However, and this is important note. For everything you do, you are in the sandbox with other kids. Sad smile Your add-in is loading in the same AppDomain as everybody else. If there is another VSTO 3.5/4.0 Add-in loaded in Excel and that add-in is not doing any of the above – well, your still going to have problems.

That is what makes this issue so vexing. Steaming mad You can play by all the rules, but you cannot prevent other kids from throwing sand. This is why I see some customers going to the extreme to manage out (disable) all other COM add-ins when they load their solution. But this does not work for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Loaded add-ins.

There are few options and most involve a lot of code. I say, TEST. If your are in an Enterprise environment, test all your VSTO add-ins together, find code owners and get everyone on the same page. If it is a vendor add-in causing the problem, point them here. Smile

Script to Migrate Normal.dot

David E. CraigLeave a comment

When you deploy Office 2010 over an existing install of Office 2003, one thing that will happen is that user settings in Microsoft Word (auto-text, styles, macros,etc.) will not translate forward. This is because as part of the migration process, the Normal.dot for Office 2003 is renamed to Normal11.dot. The following article details this:

The article outlines a set of steps to manually replace the original Normal.dot. However, it does not provide a means to perform this step during setup/deployment or as a script to be deployed as part of a post-install or login.

The following is a JavaScript sample that performs the steps outlined in the KB article above:

shell = new ActiveXObject('WScript.Shell'); 
userPath = shell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings('%UserProfile%'); 
var path = userPath + "\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Templates\\";
var fs = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
var newNormal = fs.GetFile(path + "normal.dotm");
newNormal.Move(path + "new_normal.dotm");
var oldNormal = fs.GetFile(path + "normal11.dot");
oldNormal.Move(path + "normal.dot");

Outlook Calendar Cleaner

David E. Craig1 Comment

I encountered an odd problem while working with a customer that was porting from Lotus Notes to Office 365 (Exchange) and ended up creating a new tool called the Outlook Calendar Cleaner.

The customer had a mixed environment of Mac and Windows and in certain conditions appointment items were disappearing on the Mac Office Outlook calendar, but still appearing in Outlook Web Access (OWA) and if the delegate was in Windows, they would still see the appointment on their view of the owners calendar.

The issue turns out to be that in the conversion a multi-line subject in an appointment item (supported in Lotus, but not in Exchange), has the new line character converted to a start of text (SOT) character or ASCII code 0x02. The problem is that this is an invalid character in XML and the Exchange Web Services implementation on Mac O/S X does not properly parse this character. This causes the process to hang and all appointments which were being imported on that thread are not copied over. Net effect – they appear to be missing in Mac Outlook.

So, I created a tool to correct the problem. The Outlook Calendar Cleaner is a very specific tool targeting this problem. You can to open the users Exchange Account (Office 365 account) in Outlook 2010 for Windows and run the tool in Windows and it will clean any appointments found to have this special character.

I have posted the Outlook Calendar Cleaner tool on Codeplex (along with the source code). Here:

https://outlookcalendarclean.codeplex.com/

Excel File Cleaner

David E. Craig1 Comment

Last year I worked with a major fortune 500 company on an issue they were having with their Excel files increasing in size by major proportions, slow load times, and cell formatting errors. Each of the problems are documented by well known issues in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

The company had problems with the workarounds listed in the articles. Those tools/options did not work well because they targeted files created in Excel 2003 and did not take into account the extended cell range capabilities in Excel 2007/2010. As such I created a new tool to help combat this issue. They have since deployed this tool throughout their organization to great success.

Just recently, in an effort to increase the adoption of this tool, I placed it on CodePlex (source code and all). The tool uses the OpenXml toolkit to correct files that exhibit issues (file size, slowness and cell format errors). You can access it here:

Excel File Cleaner